This is a presentation that you can use to explain Piazza to your colleagues at seminars, faculty meetings, or via email/Facebook/Twitter. We've kept it completely free of branding and largely (we hope) free of marketing lingo, so you can make it your own. If you want to sign up for Piazza, it's free! Go to www.piazza.com and have at it.

1. Teaching with Piazza

2. What is Piazza?
Piazza is a free online platform for
class Q&A that replaces mailing lists
and bulletin boards

3. What Makes Piazza Different?
• Answer Quality
– Creates a single, collaboratively edited answer
• Timeliness
– Pushes real-time updates for faster responses
• Sensitivity to roles
– Gives instructors workflow and stats, and students
anonymity

4. Who Uses Piazza?
• Over 1,000 classes in Fall 2011
• Over 100,000 students at over 300 schools
• Stanford, Berkeley, GA Tech early adopters
• Community colleges, high schools also use it
• 90% of current use is in STEM subjects
• Median response time: 25 minutes
• 30% of students log in daily, 50% weekly

5. Why Do Instructors Use Piazza?
• Saves time
– Fewer redundant questions
– Faster workflow than email, newsgroups
• Improves collaboration environment
– More students’ posts, more students’ answers
– Answers better, easier to find
• Focuses effort
– Instant understanding of what’s confusing
– Ability to focus 1:1 on students who need help

6. Other Important Facts
• Piazza is free
• Piazza complies with FERPA
• Anyone with a .edu can sign up at any time
• You can enroll students directly by entering
their emails or by sending them a special link
• iOS and Android apps are now available

7. Key Tips for Success
• Make sure students enroll in the first week!
• Stop answering group questions via email
• Post useful content on Piazza
• Give positive feedback to participants

8. Piazza 101: The Dashboard
Question Feed
Question
Panel
Tags

9. Piazza 101: Question Feed
Chronological organization makes it easy to keep
on top of new content
Filters let you focus immediately on unresolved or
updated content
Numbers in grey indicate how many updates since
you last read this
tells you when a student has responded, so
you can quickly verify the answer
Tells you when students’ response has been
endorsed by an instructor, so you can rest easy
tells you whether an instructor has already
responded, so you save time

10. Piazza 101: Question Panel
Question
• Asked by student
• Instructors can edit, clarify
Students’ Response
• Students and instructors edit
together
• Creates collective understanding
• Can be endorsed by instructors
Instructors’ Response
• Instructors edit collaboratively
• Becomes source of truth when there’s
doubt

11. Piazza 101: Follow-Ups
Mark as resolved to avoid redundant
effort
Discussion capabilities for deeper
dives into questions
Responses come in real-time, like a chat room

12. Why It Works for Students
• One answer means less searching
• Lower barrier to asking questions
• Lower barrier to a “partial” answer
• Quick turn-around means high engagement
“Piazza is the third tab, beside Facebook and
mail, that students have open when they study”

13. Piazza 201: Tags
• Let you, students categorize posts
• Make finding, filtering topics easier
• Anyone can create a tag by prepending a word
with #

14. Piazza 201: Tags
• Set up numbered tags for recurring themes
– Problem sets, labs, exams
– Prevent “tag sprawl,” e.g. #hw1 v. #homework1

15. Piazza 201: Privacy
Students can post
anonymously to their
peers, so they feel free to
post “dumb” questions
Optionally, they can be
anonymous to instructors
Students may use partial
names to maintain
privacy

16. Piazza 201: Statistics
Watch activity trends to
see when students
have more questions or
when attention flags
See which individual
students (or
instructors) are most
active

17. How I Use Piazza
• Check in 3-4 times per day for updates, encourage
TA’s to do same
• Look for questions with no response or only
students’ response
• Endorse students’ responses when possible
• Encourage students to ask questions on Piazza after
lecture, answer right away

18. Seminar/Readings Courses
• Use students’ response to created shared
understanding of class readings
– Assign teams for each reading
– Edit responses for clarity
• Encourage pre- and post-seminar discussions
– Use follow-up discussions to focus on readings
– Use notes/questions for lecture questions

19. Piazza and Your LMS/CMS
• LMS/CMS keeps enrollment info, grades, tests
• Piazza hosts discussions, course materials
• Two integration options
– Instructor enters student enrollment info
manually
– Piazza supports LTI integration
• Single sign-on
• Ability to select Piazza a service for your course
• Talk to ed-tech team for details

20. How to Learn More
• Visit www.piazza.com
– “Try it Now” to see user experience
– Videos to learn more
– Sign up for webinars
– Just create a class; it takes only a few minutes
• Talk to me or other instructors